Liar's Market. Taylor Smith
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already that, don’t you? Anyway, it’s just a few miles from Langley, so it was convenient for Drum. His mother has been rattling around in it by herself ever since his father died. She has a daughter, as well—Drum’s sister, Eleanor—but she lives in New York and hardly ever returns to D.C. Anyway, I think I said that Drum inherited the house when his father died. When he was posted back to Langley, neither he nor his mother would hear of us living anywhere else.
How did you feel about that?
It wasn’t the first time. We’d lived there before the posting to London, too—after Africa, when Jonah, our son, was a baby.
I know, but I asked how you felt about it. Not many young wives would want to live with their mothers-in-law.
Well, no, neither did I particularly, to be honest. But we left London so suddenly, I didn’t have time to convince Drum we should be looking for our own place.
So you just went along with what he wanted?
To begin with, yes. You have to understand, I had a lot on my plate. There’s a ton of personal admin that has to be taken care when these transfers come through. With Drum as busy as he was at work, that all fell on me—the shipment of our personal effects, getting what we’d left behind out of storage. Drum’s Jag was in storage, but I had to find a car for myself. I also had Jonah to get settled. Had to try to find a summer day camp that was still accepting registration. There was no way a six-year-old could be expected to hang around the house all summer. He would have been bored silly, and Althea—that’s Drum’s mother—she wasn’t used to having noisy children underfoot, either.
Anyway, bottom line—living there wasn’t ideal, as far as I was concerned, but with our rushed departure from London, it’s what I was handed. I tried to make the best of it.
And your husband? How did he seem when you got back to D.C.?
He was even busier than he’d been in London, just as I suspected he’d be—which was another reason he had no interest in house hunting.
How did he settle in?
It’s been tough for him, the past two or three months.
How so?
Well, being back at headquarters is not like being out in the field. You’re a lot more independent out there. Back here—well, you must know this yourself. The FBI can’t be that different from the rest of the government. There’s a lot of bureaucracy to deal with. Political gamesmanship, that sort of thing. Drum hates all that.
So he wasn’t happy?
He was showing signs of stress, I’d say. It wasn’t that he couldn’t handle the deputy’s job, mind you. He was really pleased to have been promoted. It was more like, he was champing at the bit to get to it. He wanted to put his mark on things, he said. Travel out to the posts, get to know all the station chiefs.
And what was stopping him?
As I say, bureaucracy. It seems there was some big organizational review underway—still the fallout from September 11, I gather. You know—trying to decide what the Agency did wrong, coming up with recommendations on what they might do differently in future. When Drum got back from London, the Director asked him to take on the running of that task force for a few weeks. Said it needed a little fire put under it. Drum felt he couldn’t say no, especially when the Director stressed how high profile it was, and how important to the Agency’s future. But Drum was more and more frustrated with every passing week. Said he was spending his days pushing paper around, chairing endless meetings—except not the ones he wanted to be in on.
And which were those?
The ones dealing with day-to-day operations, I suppose.
And so?
So, nothing. What could he do? He had to get the damn job finished, he said. That’s what he was trying to do. All I know is, we hardly ever saw him. Most days, he left home before Jonah was up and came back long after he was in bed. After I’d gone to bed, too, for the most part.
He left at what time in the morning, generally?
About seven. He liked to beat the traffic and be at his desk before seven-thirty.
Always?
Whenever he was in town, yes. As I say, he was almost always gone by the time Jonah came downstairs for breakfast.
So, he had a routine that never varied.
Not really.
And then two days ago, something changed. Right, Carrie?
You know it did. That was the day everything changed.
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